My Goal: Too much prejudice in this world - and not just racial. Religious and especially political prejudice is more prevalent and more harmful. The blogosphere has added to that and I want to subtract from it.

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Wednesday, May 9, 2007

The historian Robert Caro believes that Lord Acton had it wrong. Power does not tend to corrupt but to reveal. It did both to Lord Randolf

When he reached the top, his fits of temperamental behavior could no longer be hidden. In fact, power and responsibility made it worse. He was sick. This was the only explanation of his conduct during the months he was at the top. A friend asked him how long he expected to last as Leader. “Six months,” was the answer. “And then what?” He said, “Westminster Abbey.”

He was sullen. He quarreled with everybody. He stopped talking to Jennie. He ignored his children. He became known for his rudeness to his friends and his aloofness from everybody else.

Inside the cabinet opinion hardened against him. Winston Churchill later tried to present the story as the hard-line conservatives versus his father the reformer. In fairness to Lord Salisbury and the others, their administration eventually did turn a credible record of reform. They weren’t so much against reform; they were against his bad behavior.

Arthur Balfour wrote Salisbury,

My idea is that at present we ought to do nothing but let Randolf hammer away. . . . I am inclined that we should avoid, as far as possible, all “rows” until R. puts himself entirely and flagrantly in the wrong by some act of Party disloyalty which everybody can understand and nobody can deny.

Lord Randolf did just this and did it in the most self-destructive way imaginable. Just before Christmas he visited the Queen at Windsor Castle. By this time it was not surprising that Jennie did not come along. While at the Castle he wrote an ultimatum to Salisbury on the Queen’s own letterhead. He did not inform the Queen.

From Jennie’s Memoirs:

So little did I realize the grave step Randolf was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office which was to be lent to us for the occasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation, we went to a play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolf as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying: ‘Oh! I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.” I could get none of his meaning and shortly after the first act he left us, ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death warrant.

At The Times Randolf asked the Editor to support him in his lead editorial. He refused. Randolf said, “There is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news.” The Editor replied, “You cannot bribe The Times.”

Lord Randolf’s mother the Duchess was actually at Salisbury’s home when the letter arrived. An observer wrote, she “wept large tears of fury and mortification . . . and was conveyed to London speechless.”

Jennie remembered,

When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate.

He had been in office six months.

All this probably did not matter much anyhow. Lord Randolf had only a few years left to live and those of declining physical and mental health.

The Government sent an official to his house to take back the historic robes of the Chancellor. Jennie refused to give them back. “I am saving them for my son.”The historian Robert Caro believes that Lord Acton had it wrong. Power does not tend to corrupt but to reveal. It did both to Lord Randolf

When he reached the top, his fits of temperamental behavior could no longer be hidden. In fact, power and responsibility made it worse. He was sick. This was the only explanation of his conduct during the months he was at the top. A friend asked him how long he expected to last as Leader. “Six months,” was the answer. “And then what?” He said, “Westminster Abbey.”

He was sullen. He quarreled with everybody. He stopped talking to Jennie. He ignored his children. He became known for his rudeness to his friends and his aloofness from everybody else.

Inside the cabinet opinion hardened against him. Winston Churchill later tried to present the story as the hard-line conservatives versus his father the reformer. In fairness to Lord Salisbury and the others, their administration eventually did turn a credible record of reform. They weren’t so much against reform; they were against his bad behavior.

Arthur Balfour wrote Salisbury,

My idea is that at present we ought to do nothing but let Randolf hammer away. . . . I am inclined that we should avoid, as far as possible, all “rows” until R. puts himself entirely and flagrantly in the wrong by some act of Party disloyalty which everybody can understand and nobody can deny.

Lord Randolf did just this and did it in the most self-destructive way imaginable. Just before Christmas he visited the Queen at Windsor Castle. By this time it was not surprising that Jennie did not come along. While at the Castle he wrote an ultimatum to Salisbury on the Queen’s own letterhead. He did not inform the Queen.

From Jennie’s Memoirs:

So little did I realize the grave step Randolf was contemplating, that I was at that moment occupied with the details of a reception we were going to give at the Foreign Office which was to be lent to us for the occasion. Already the cards had been printed. The night before his resignation, we went to a play with Sir Henry Wolff. Questioning Randolf as to the list of guests for the party, I remember being puzzled at his saying: ‘Oh! I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you; it probably will never take place.” I could get none of his meaning and shortly after the first act he left us, ostensibly to go to the club, but in reality to go to The Times office and give them the letter he had written at Windsor Castle three nights before. In it he resigned all he had worked for for years, and, if he had but known it, signed his political death warrant.

At The Times Randolf asked the Editor to support him in his lead editorial. He refused. Randolf said, “There is not another paper in England that would not show some gratitude for such a piece of news.” The Editor replied, “You cannot bribe The Times.”

Lord Randolf’s mother the Duchess was actually at Salisbury’s home when the letter arrived. An observer wrote, she “wept large tears of fury and mortification . . . and was conveyed to London speechless.”

Jennie remembered,

When I came down to breakfast, the fatal paper in my hand, I found him calm and smiling. “Quite a surprise for you,” he said. He went into no explanation, and I felt too utterly crushed and miserable to ask for any, or even to remonstrate.

He had been in office six months.

All this probably did not matter much anyhow. Lord Randolf had only a few years left to live and those of declining physical and mental health.

The Government sent an official to his house to take back the historic robes of the Chancellor. Jennie refused to give them back. “I am saving them for my son.”

---------------------------------------------Excerpt from a book in progress. Churchill Stories. (from Chapter 1.)